Michelle Garren Flye's Blog, page 76

Top Ten Books that Celebrate Our Country…Honestly.

Happy Fourth of July! Over the years of my reading career, I’ve read a lot of books that leave me with a sense that I know a little more about the United States and why I should be happy to live here. Here are ten of those novels, for your summer reading pleasure.

1. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Was anybody more honest about our country than Samuel Clemens? I get the feeling he really understood what was going on, at least in the Southern United States. I’ve always prefered Huck to Tom because of the lush, wild landscapes of the Mississippi River, and in particular the relationship that grows between Huck and Jim.

2. The Great Gatsby. An honest look at American excess. We’d all do well to remember the lessons this book can teach us.

3. Little Women. For all its faults, Little Women is still the book I’d choose as the foil to my other Civil War favorite…

4. Gone With the Wind. I love reading this story of the Southern Belle who grows up. Maybe I can relate to it. I’m a girl raised in the south. And yes, I’ve had to adjust my perspective on things as I grew up. I’m no Scarlett O’Hara, but I can see myself in her at times.

5. The Scarlet Letter. Hawthorne’s classic tale is surprisingly still appropriate to today’s world. Every time the media chooses a scapegoat or public opinion turns against someone, I think of this novel I was forced to read in high school and have found so fascinating ever since.

6. The Secret Garden. Kid book or not, this is a wonderful story about rediscovering the beauty in something old and overgrown. I hope one day we can find that in our own nation.

7. Look Homeward, Angel. This list would not be complete without a shout out to my fellow writer from the NC mountains, Thomas Wolfe. I always fear I’ll do the same thing he did when I write and alienate the hometown I still love.

8. Little House in the Big Woods. Although it was probably colored by nostalgia, this was my first introduction to life in an earlier day of history.

9. The Red Badge of Courage. Oh, how I hated this book when I was made to read it in high school. I wanted to believe the world was all light and love and war was all glorious patriotism. This was my first introduction to the reality of what war can do to the human spirit.

10. The Sound and the Fury. This story about the downfall of Southern royalty both fascinated and disgusted me when I read it in high school. I’ve often thought I should read it again.

Enjoy your summer and be happy to live in our great nation. It’s not every nation that would not only allow but also support the honesty of some of these authors.

50 Golden Things: Happy Anniversary Mama and Daddy!

Today is a pretty special day for my family. It’s my mother and father’s fiftieth wedding anniversary. In honor of their special day, my brothers, my kids and I came up with a list of fifty golden things that mean something special to us. I was in charge of typing it up and printing it out…and I forgot to print it out. So instead, I thought I’d share it with all of you. And here it is:

For Carl & Gerry Garren

on their 50th Wedding Anniversary

June 30, 2013

You may think we never had much gold,

and maybe we didn’t—if you’re talking about money, anyway.

But here’s a list of fifty golden things

we learned to appreciate because of your love:

1. Golden sands of Jekyll Island

2. And speaking of which, The Golden Isles!

3. Yellow roses

4. Butterball turkeys on Thanksgiving

5. Daffodils in spring

6. Honeysuckle in summer

7. Golden highlights in polished wood

8. Macaroni and cheese for lunch

9. A gold pen in Daddy’s front pocket

10. Honeybees and butterflies

11. Juicy fruit chewing gum wrappers

12. Gold crosses on simple gold chains

13. Daddy’s gold Oldsmobile

14. Gold and silver tinsel on Christmas trees

15. Yellow flames in a charcoal grill

16. Golden hamsters—like Frances!

17. Goldfinches at the birdfeeder

18. Lemonade on a hot summer day

19. Golden leaves in the fall

20. Gold foil wrappers on chocolate Easter eggs

21. Lemon meringue pie

22. Jack-o-lanterns

23. Sunny days in the hammock

24. A chipmunk’s golden fur

25. Golden music from the old stereo

26. Little Golden Books!

27. Butter on the rolls at Berry’s

28. Candlelight in a “blackout”

29. Gold print on the black leather cover of a Bible

30. Lamplight on a snowy day

31. Laughter is golden…and we had a lot of it

32. Golden tans in summertime

33. Fireworks on the Fourth of July

34. Full moons

35. The Golden Arches and Happy Meals

36. Yellowed pages of old books

37. Golden corn on the cob…fresh from the garden

38. Cornbread with pinto beans and fried potatoes

39. Sunflowers

40. Lightning bugs

41. Little golden pancakes shaped like animals

42. Pinecones

43. Acorns

44. Hot honey lemon tea…best medicine for coughs!

45. Popcorn from our popcorn popper

46. Flashlights…and shadow puppets on the wall

47. Sunsets

48. Gold bows on Christmas and birthday presents

49. Bouquets of buttercups and dandelions

50. Your gold wedding bands

For these and every other multi-colored thing

you’ve given us, thank you. We love you!

I need to be writing. Even if I sometimes ask what’s the point?

Here’s a little peek at how I as an indie contemporary romance author often feel: Hello? Is this thing on?

I recently read a very good blog article about why indie writers need to avoid underpricing their books. The author made several very good points, but one in particular stood out to me. Unless we write as a hobby, we’re hoping our writing will eventually support us. It’s hard to do that when you’re selling your work for 99 cents.

I’ve spoken up several times on this subject in support of writers selling their work for whatever the hell they want to sell it for—provided they can find buyers. It’s survival of the fittest out there in the publishing world, and anything you can do to give yourself an edge is fair game.

The problem is, pricing your ebook at 99 cents is no longer going to give you that much of an edge. In fact, giving it away is no longer going to give you an edge. The only real way to get an edge in today’s market is to study your craft and write and promote and study and write and promote…and pray. Yup, that’s right. Pray. Pray to God or Buddha or your muse. Pray for that magic moment when, for some unknown reason, the words you wrote catch on. Something snags the attention of the reading masses and it’s your book that’s being tweeted and talked and posted about.

I’m still waiting for that. Reviewers (for the most part) like my writing. But hey, most of them get my books for free. (Want a review copy? Email me. I’ll send it out. Kindle or paperback. Your choice.) So I’m still trying everything I can, including different price points, to catch that wave.

Just the other day, I dropped the price of Ducks in a Row from $2.99 to $1.99 in the hopes that it would spur some sales. The sequel, Saturday Love, is with an editor now and I hope to publish it in January. I think there are literally dozens of people waiting for that sequel, and I have no intentions of disappointing them. If I could grow those dozens to hundreds by January, that’d be pretty awesome, though.

And, can you keep a secret? Next week on July 1, Close Up Magic will be free for one day only. I’m not telling everyone yet, just you guys. I’d hate to discourage anyone from paying for the book now.

But as I wait for that moment when it all comes together with pricing and readers and promotions and magic, be assured I’m writing. And I’m striving to write each book a little better than the last one so that eventually my readers won’t even look at the price of my novels. Eventually, they’ll see another book by me and buy it without worrying about how much it costs because they know it’s worth it.

Blog Tour Winner Announcement!

As you may know, I’ve been touring the web over the past month talking about magic and writing and specifically, Close Up Magic. During the course of that tour, I’ve met some really great people, who’ve commented on my blog posts. Well, today, I get the happy job of awarding a Magic Basket to one of those commenters. The basket includes, among other things, a copy of Magic for Dummies, a mini magic kit and some magic tricks I picked up at Houdini’s Magic Shop in Las Vegas. I’d put up a picture, but I’m actually waiting on a couple of finishing touches to arrive. When they get here, I’ll put it all together and post a picture before I mail it to Rita.

Earlier today with the help of Random.org, I chose commenter Rita Wray as the winner of the magic basket! Congratulations, Rita! I’ll be emailing you in just a few minutes to get your mailing address.

Everybody else, thank you so much for your support during the tour. It meant a lot to hear from readers and potential readers. I’m planning another blog tour for my next book, Saturday Love, which comes out in January. Saturday Love, the sequel to Ducks in a Row, is set in a vineyard in Eastern NC and the heroine is Greek. Hmm. What kind of grand prize could I come up for that? I’m thinking it’ll be yummy!

Review Highlights from this Week

During the course of my blog tour for my contemporary romance Close Up Magic, I asked for reviews as well as traditional blog stops. When I did this, I knew there were no guarantees. In fact, at the time I booked my tour, very few people other than me had actually read Close Up Magic. But I believed in it enough to go ahead and do it.

Well, this week, I braced myself as the reviews started rolling in. Five brave reviewers took a stand and offered me their opinion on my book. Thankfully, they were positive, overall, and I drew a breath of relief. Here are the highlights:

“We have all read those books where the girl is infatuated with the guy, they both have been screwed over by someone close to them and they have trust issues. But what Michelle Garren Flye has done that not many authors are capable of is, she had created incredible characters with such depth that they evoke such true emotion from the reader that you find yourself yelling at your kindle even when you knew it was going to happen.” –We Love Kink

“Michelle Garren Flye is a wizard with words and I completely enjoyed her voice. Also, I always worry about self-published books, but this one was well edited and had no overt errors. If you love fun, sweet romances with a hero you’ll fall for just as hard as the heroine does, then I recommend Close Up Magic.” –Long and Short Reviews

Ahem, a short note here. I can’t help but point out the “wizard with words” thing. Seriously, that may be the greatest compliment I’ve ever gotten on my writing! You’re all going to get really tired of that “wizard with words” thing, I think. Especially if you follow me on Twitter or Facebook.

“It was hard for me to pick one genre for this story. It’s definitely a contemporary romance, but it leaves just a hint of magic, just a bit of imagination which makes me believe that it is a bit of a fantasy book too. You aren’t sure if it’s saying that magic is real or not, but I can tell you that the threads of story and character were woven together..dare I say it…magically and I really enjoyed reading it.” –Unabridged Andra

“Ms. Flye is a new author to me and I can’t get over how well written Close Up Magic was for me. The characters had depth to them, the setting was perfect and even the secondary characters were fleshed out. Also, even though I was “reading” the magic tricks, I could picture them in my mind. Great job.” –Harlie’s Books

Another note: I really, really love a good magic show, so obviously I wanted to give my reader a little taste of what it’s like to be at one, and this review confirmed I accomplished that. I’m so glad it worked, and I hope to be a well-known author to Harlie before long.

“The author has a great way with words, painting a picture so clear I could see the scenes in my mind like a movie. The characters are well drawn and three dimensional – so much so, I loved some and hated some intensely. I was so invested in the well-being of those I enjoyed I wanted to smack those I didn’t, who were interfering with the HEA.” –Straight from the Library

Now, the course of my relationship with reviewers has not always been this smooth, so I’m still waiting for the fly to land in my chocolate pudding. However, I learn so much from competent, honest reviewers, whether what they tell is positive or negative, I’m still looking for more reviews of Close Up Magic. If you’re a reviewer who’d like to check out a copy of Close Up Magic, contact me at michellegflye at gmail dot com, and I’ll be happy to provide you a copy for your Kindle. And if you’re a reviewer who’s already checked out Close Up Magic and would be interested in reviewing one of my other books, let me know that too.

Thanks to all my book reviewers, and all the other hosts of my blog tour! Tomorrow I’ll be awarding a magic basket to one randomly drawn commenter from the tour and a $20 gift card to one of my hosts (again, randomly chosen)! So check back tomorrow afternoon when I’ve had a chance to compile my list and consult Random.org for the winners.

I love the word “epiphany”. Here’s mine from today.

I’m not home right now, and maybe that’s why I’m a little more sensitive…and observant. I’m actually in the little town I went to college in, and it seems like everywhere I look, I see myself twenty-odd years younger. The idea that I might catch a glimpse of myself from those glory days when I was more beautiful than I thought and not nearly as smart as I believed makes me look a little closer at the people I pass. And today that led me to an epiphany.

God, I do love that word. And it describes what I felt so perfectly. It was like an explosion of perfect knowledge inside my head.

It was as I passed by a beautiful young woman dressed in a business suit. She couldn’t have been much older than the college students, and she looked tired. I began to imagine her story because she reminded me of me at that age. She’d just come from a job interview. She has a few more classes to finish up in summer school and then she’ll have her degree in business administration or education or library science or economics. Her future is full of uncertainty and promise and she’s having a hard time dealing with everything that’s being thrown at her but she’s doing her best.

And I started wondering why I knew that. And BAM!

I realized it’s because she’s just like me. She’s walking along, keeping all her emotions in check and all her worries and insecurities safely beneath the surface so I won’t see them. But I know them because they’re mine, too. Or they were at one time. And that’s when it really hit me that we’re all the same. We’re all insecure. We all worry about tomorrow and our imperfect bodies and our health and losing the people we love. We all try to keep it under wraps so we don’t freak out the other guy. But the other guy’s doing the same thing. And for just a second as I walked down the street, I could see it clearly. The girl I was passing, the old man sitting on the side of the road offering to have his dog do tricks for a dollar, the biker, the people waiting at the bus stop. And me.

All souls contained by the thin skin of our bodies.

What would happen if everyone everywhere suddenly had that same epiphany? What if we all realized that those little things don’t matter and we can’t change how other people see us and those people are worrying about how we see them, anyway? What if we all stopped trying to suck in our stomachs and say the exact right thing and not look too closely at the people we don’t think we want to know?

Like all explosions, this one was over quickly. What I’m writing now comes only from the last embers of it. It doesn’t come close to the moment of perfect knowledge, but at least I can share this much of it.

What a week! Time to give some stuff away…

Okay, it’s really, really good to be sitting here on THIS side of last week. I feel like it’s the first breather I’ve taken all week. In addition to returning home at 11 o’clock Sunday night from Las Vegas, this was the first week of my online book tour, the last week of school for two of my kids and the week I had to get the school library packed up. I’ve been up at six AM and going until I put my kids to bed all week.

To make it all the more fun, on Wednesday I got up to a fantastic email from Amazon telling me the Kindle version of my book had magically transformed into a string of letters and numbers that nobody could read. I’m not kidding, it was like it was in some sort of code or something. I swear that happened sometime SINCE I put it online. So I had to spend a fair amount of time Wednesday re-uploading the Kindle version, seething all the while because I was technically promoting a book that wasn’t even available for more than twenty-four hours–at least not available in the preferred format. I felt like I was on a speeding train going somewhere I really needed to be…but I’d left the luggage that would make the trip worth it.

Please understand, I’m not complaining, exactly. I’m EXplaining my absence from here.

And I want to make it up to you. I’ve been planning to give away copies of DUCKS IN A ROW and WEEDS AND FLOWERS for a while, and today seems like a great time to do it. So please, be my guest. Download my other two indie babies. And if you’re only interested in CLOSE UP MAGIC, I’ve got something for you there, as well. I’ve already posted Chapter One online. In a few minutes, Chapter Two will join it. You can find them here: CLOSE UP MAGIC.

Happy reading!

Well, that’s embarrassing…Kindle issue alert!

This morning, I woke up to a notice that my new book Close Up Magic is showing up as a string of unreadable characters on readers’ Kindle devices. After my initial shock, I checked it out, and sure enough, it was. Holy cow! What happened to the file between a couple of weeks ago when I uploaded it and now, I cannot tell you. I’ve never heard of Kindle Direct being hacked, but I do know that I uploaded a good file, checked it over thoroughly and didn’t hit the publish button until I had every confidence it would be worth the buyer’s money.

Ah well, I talked yesterday about best-laid plans.

At any rate, long story short, if you purchased Close Up Magic and it isn’t working properly, please return it! I would never want anyone to be stuck with a bad copy of one of my books! And if you haven’t tried it out on your Kindle yet, give it a try. I think there are limits to how long you can return a Kindle books, and I don’t want you to run into a block there.

And if you do return the book, I hope you’ll check back in about twenty-four hours. I uploaded a new file this morning, tested it on the preview reader and know it’s good. I will keep my fingers crossed that it stays that way!

In other news, consider joining me on my book tour today. I’m over at Flirting with Romance, talking about all sorts of flirty, romantic things. It’s a fun interview and not nearly as long as yesterday’s post on the Dan O’Brien Project!

Did you ever hear of best laid plans?

It’s either a case of best laid plans or not planning well at all, but when I decided to launch Close Up Magic on the first of June, complete with a three-week whirlwind book tour two days later, I completely didn’t take into account that this would be one of my craziest weeks ever.

In addition to trying to keep up with my regular craziness, I have to add in the last week of school for my kids, packing up the school library in preparation to move it, and my daughter being out of school. Long story short, I’m not going to be physically able to do everything I should to promote my book tour. I still plan on tweeting about it and posting it on Facebook, but posting on here everyday? Not going to happen. That’s why I’ve put up the menu on the right side of your screen under the pretty book cover image. If you check there every day, you’ll be able to see where I am, and I will also magically transform each of those blog names into a link to my post!

And why is this important? Because commenters on each post are eligible to win a $5 Amazon gift card–one at every stop! And at the end of the tour, I’ll be giving away a Magic Basket–that’s right, a basket full of magic and books about magic! You don’t want to miss out on that, do you?

Plus, I’m revealing a little bit about me and Close Up Magic at every stop. What makes magicians sexy? Why do I enjoy magic? Who do I have a secret crush on? (Got your attention there!) I’m not going to tell you which post that’s in, either! You’ll have to pay attention.

In the meantime, how about checking out my post on Deal Sharing Aunt?

Welcome to My Book Day Party!: Contest Winners!

Welcome! It’s a very happy release day party for Close Up Magic today. First order of business has to be giving away the Kindle Paperwhite, of course. With the help of Random.org, one name was selected, and that name was…Glen Held! Glen’s a fan of the Close Up Magic Facebook Page, so I’ll get in touch with him and find out how to get the Kindle to him.

Second order of business is that yes, I am in Vegas, where Close Up Magic takes place. And I’m doing my best to make it to as many of them as possible, but I also promised a $20 gift card to those who gave me suggestions. And the winner of that card was…Bessamy Snoderly!

Thanks to everyone who participated in my giveaways and who have helped me promote Close Up Magic. I can still use the help, but I’m afraid it’ll have to be out of the goodness of your heart…although I am giving away a basket of magic tricks later this month on my virtual book tour. It starts Monday and I hope you’ll all join me there. In the meantime, check out my Twitter feed today for pictures of me and Close Up Magic in Las Vegas!